Review

For one reason or another, Australia does “the musical” well. They rarely take it too serious, and they always add some innovative and relatively interesting flair to the experience to make it stick out among the wide breadth of musical films (Wait…there are a lot of them?). Regardless, Starstruck is stupid as it is awesome, like watching a homoerotic adventure of two racist hillbilies, Starstruck is a train wreck of a film begging to be challenged. Starstruck fails to challenge you mentally, but it does challenger your ears with a whole slew of awful songs playing on cliches of the theater world. if you thought Glee was bad, watch Starstruck tackle Hollywood fame and musical elitism, through the eyes of a typical Australian pop star. Don’t kill yourself yet, you haven’t even seen it!

Reason to Watch

It’s like a lamer more idiotic Hairspray, if Hairspray was lame or dumb. that makes sense, right?

Context

Even though many people just want to sort of forget that Australia, like, exists and stuff, we can at least be confident that they can manage some rather interesting little musicals. Though they aren’t really worth watching, their still proof that everyone in that country has no concerns whatever except “the dance.”

Most Memorable Quote(s)

Nana: Lay off him, my love. you know he has a plate in his head

Jackie: guitars are phallic symbols, and guitarists masturbate for a living. So God only knows why you’d need me

Clip

Review

The Rocky Horror Picture Show is infamous for being so overtly stupid yet endearing. Very few films have elegantly balanced the bizarre and stupid with the enthralling nature of great film. So here we have a horror film, but not really. And here we have a musical, though only slightly. The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a comedy driven by dark horror elements and musical odes to weirdness. It is hard to sum up the film (took me an hour to craft that exquisite previous sentence), but if any film needs to be watched to be even slightly understood, it is this one. Expect a little adventure of a recently engaded couple in a mansion surrounded by vampires and transvestites and vampire transvestites. Whoa.

Reason to Watch

I would say there is Susan Sarandon in her prime, but that’s like praising John Goodman’s looks in his prime, or Morgan Freeman circa The Shawshank Redemption. Just didn’t do it for me. But on a serious note, homoerotic monsters sing acapella, so if that is more your style, you will be right in heaven.

Context

The Rocky Horror Picture Show is equitably the best horror musical ever, and in a time where any vampire in film or television is a huge pussy, it’s shocking to see the transvestite ones the most classic vampire-ish.

Most Memorable Quote(s)

Frank: [singing] I’m just a sweet transvestite, from Transsexual Transylvania.

Magenta: I ask for nothing! Frank: And you shall receive it, IN ABUNDANCE!

What You Need to Get Through This Movie

You will probably need some proper ambiance- fake spiderwebs, a purple vampire cape, hanging skeletons, creepy flickering lights, and a case of Budweiser to make it all work together perfectly.

Trivia

The film runs in two key versions, one for U.S. release and the other U.K. The U.S. version originally omitted the singing part “Super Heroes” because studio executives thought it was too depressing

The movie was banned in South Africa, only after 250,000 viewers already saw it in the region

Director Jim Sharman was originally offered a much larger budget if he hired popular actors at the time, but refused instead taking a smaller budget and using actors from the theater version

Educational Content

Musical’s aren’t always just stupid, sometimes their stupid and awesome

Don’t get married and drive off somewhere or else you may end up singing with erotically-infused tenors

Justification for Rating

The film is undoubtedly a little dated, but the charm and appeal of the Rocky Horror Picture Show is well intact. It doesn’t quite fit that ‘so bad it’s good” vibe typical of classic cult films, because the production values and singing is top notch- for better or worse.